Welcome to the PKM weekly newsletter. My goal is to round up good resources in the PKM space so you don’t have to.

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Bigger Ideas

Platform agnostic ideas that may help your PKM process. They may feature a software, but I think they apply to more than a single platform.

Scott released a bunch of automations for a digital Bullet Journal System.

Scott walks us through his analogue reference notes.

Why a day planner may be better than a task manager.

Some detailed questions on getting started with your organization of notes.

It’s easy to get too many apps with content in them. This falls into the “any benefit” principle from Deep Work. Just because there is some possible benefit, doesn’t mean you should be using a tool or doing a thing.

How Cal Newport organizes his life. Very similar to what I’ve been doing for 10 years.

Are handwritten digital notes worth it?

Not sure I agree with the ideas around writer’s block, but this was a good read from a writer. I fall into line with the thoughts from How to Write a Lot by Paul J Silvia.

I agree, publishing your graph view is mostly productivity porn so you look fancy with a graph view. It’s easy to add more notes so the graph looks “better” and accomplishes nothing with the work done.

Nicole showed off Readwise Reader and her Obsidian workflow. This app does work with more than Obsidian though so check it out.

Maintaining a reading list. I have a small pile of “next” books but that changes regularly based on what looks interesting on my shelves.

What do you do if you have a bilingual Zettelkasten?

What about using PKM for “non-work” stuff? I create more notes about stuff that’s not my main day job of programming than I do about programming topics by far. So I guess my PKM system is almost entirely a personal system.

For those deciding between logseq and Obsidian, read this thread.

A vote for using DEVONthink as a single source for notes and primary sources.

There have been lots more discussions on this thread about Ulysses vs Obsidian for book-length writing. Ultimately, either tool can do it, use what works for you.

Scott released a free 63 page ebook on building an antinet zettelkasten.

Excellent article on a “lazy person’s load“

Something Interesting

Because we’re all lookin to expand our minds a bit.

America is a rich death trap. I wish the article went into why immigrants have a much higher life expectancy.

Sometimes productivity tools increase anxiety.

It’s not the duplex next door that is a blight on the neighbourhood…it’s the mansion down the road.

You don’t need more space, you just want it. I have been bold enough to say that to people when I hear “we needed more space”.

As Uber fails, maybe we should have put money into more public transit instead of dumping 32 million in losses into the failing company.

Having just built a plywood desk as a dedicated iPad station, this article on Baltic birch plywood was extra interesting.

Software

Moving documents in DEVONthink.

Some love for NotePlan 3 over Craft.

NotePlan 3.6.3 is out now. Weekly notes get some improvements and better task filtering.

Remnote

Quick tip for installing Remnote on older Linux systems.

logseq

Bunch of information here about queries in logseq.

Here is a primer on flashcards in logseq.

Craft

Craft released a Windows app. Great to see more cross-platform solutions coming that are not web applications.

Chris did a fairly deep dive into how he’s using Craft.

If you’re a teacher or student, you can get a 5-year-free Pro account.

Obsidian

I did a video showing off how to use the new popout windows in Obsidian.

Kara has a good series on using Templates in Obsidian. Check the bottom of the post for the other 3 parts.

Some thoughts on using Obsidian for D&D.

The latest Obsidian Roundup is out.

How to add working Obsidian URLS in Notion.

Roam

Roam Studio has been released. This is a plugin for Roam and represents a major change to the user experience of Roam.

Looks like Roam stopped the student/scholarship discount.

Yup I use affiliate links sometimes to support the newsletter. If it’s on Amazon, it’s an affiliate link for sure.